


Schemata

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: AU, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-05-03
Updated: 2012-05-05
Packaged: 2017-11-04 18:52:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/397082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>'Just like the train I gotta catch,<br/>Just like that song I can't finish<br/>It's the mistake I won't regret.<br/>You'll be my friend; I just haven't made you yet.'</i>
</p>
<p>Fate has a funny way of digging up the past you thought you'd rather forget. The past and all the useless psychology facts that you are probably never going to use in your life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, Real was getting a little heavy and I wanted to write something lighthearted for a while and of course it's ROSE because I love Rose so hard you have no idea. I'm not sure how far I will take this, I've just been thinking about what would happen if all the beta kids grew up exactly as they had in canon and just decided not to play Sburb, like they grew up and lived their lives normally etc.  
> 'I'll be your friend' by Bright Eyes sort of inspired this, more the feel of the music than the actual lyrics. Useless information but there you go.  
> Blaraghaghagh. Yeah, we will see how this goes. It will be unstructured and rambling but who gives a shit, this is fun.

Walking at night is a bizarre thing. To some people it’s nothing – it’s no different to walking at any other time, but to others it gives them a total buzz. John Egbert was definitely a buzzer. Maybe it was something about the streetlamps and the way they could simultaneously create strange lights and ominous shadows, or the way the darkness made the delicate sounds floating up from various different underground (in all senses of the word) establishments hum around your ears for just a little longer than perhaps your brain would usually bother to pay attention. Well, that stuff and the thrilling threat of being pulled into a dark alleyway and stabbed to death, but that was less fun to think about. Everything had its upside if you just pushed the grim stuff to the back of your mind; that was his philosophy, and for the past 19 years of his life it had done him pretty well in terms of living life to the fullest.

He’d accepted a long time ago that he was never going to be the tallest or the funniest or the smartest guy in the world, but he’d also accepted that if he chose to see his lot as the runner-up prize he was never going to get all that far either. As it happened, the at-least-semi-positive outlook had taken him pretty far indeed – here, in fact: a blessing, but that was also kind of the pressing problem right now…

Where exactly _was_ ‘here’? That was the question of the moment. As fun as wandering around some strange city at night was, it was a little unnerving that he didn’t have a single clue which city’s pavements he was chasing or where the nearest hotel was. It was quickly becoming less of an adventure and more of a problem-solving exercise as the novelty wore off. Still, it was weird to think there was a time when he’d never have done this and that gave him a pride-driven determination to continue. He’d thought about it, maybe talked about it, but never actually _done_ it, and it was _just_ the sort of thing you’d see a protagonist in a movie doing, just walking the streets at night waiting for some kind of calling: On the hunt for _adventure_. He could see it all in his mind’s eye, hear the gentle hum of some unknown indie band’s first guitar-based attempt at being edgy and cool soundtracking his aimless wandering as opening credits flashed up on the screen. In spite of himself, he chuckled a little into his scarf. He needn’t have worried about concealing it seeing as there was quite literally no one on the street apart from him, but it was a force of habit and some things never changed.

John Egbert. Nineteen years of age and out on an ‘adventure’ of the pretty tame category. Still no signs of orthodontia, and yet so far he’d fitted right in with the people he’d met. Perhaps geek-chic was in this season; perhaps it made him endearing. Perhaps it was the fact that he’d stopped giving a fuck and it showed in the form of his confident, unrestrained and genuine smiles and the way he’d finally mastered the act of never talking too loud or laughing at the wrong time, curbing his childish passion to a level that was just enough to spark interest in other people rather than scare them away. He had grown up in more ways than one and time had really done more positive work than he’d ever imagined. He was a new man, ready to face the world…

And yet, even in a place so far from home, nostalgia found its funny way of following him through the mazes of streets and alleyways that was this huge, unnamed city. Every techo-beat, dusky bookstore, or simple flower growing in a crack in the pavement made his heart falter with a pang of guilty reminiscence for simple childhood memories. The hours spent chatting online with kids he hardly knew that would become weekly skype calls, occasional mass slumber-parties and finally the dreary duties of high school studies. Sometimes people drifted apart and that was that – no one’s _fault_ , but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to miss it. It was weird how someone on the opposite side of the world could make you feel better with a line of text at the right time when you would feel nothing at the empty pat on the back from most of the people in your general vicinity. Some had been better with words than others, but it was always the thought that counted to him. Friends for life - or at least until spending hours on the internet began interfering with the real world. Growing up had its consequences, and as much as everyone had _intended_ to keep in contact, eventually their efforts had proved futile. Weekly had become monthly and slowly, one by one, the names on his pesterchum window had ceased to light up. Everyone had their own lives to lead and it was hard but the best he could do was be thankful that maybe, even if only for a little while, he’d been a part of those lives that really _mattered_ in the same way they’d been a part of his.

John froze mid-step and blinked in surprise. Wow, it was really easy to get lost in your own thoughts when you were walking alone…

He committed that to memory and glanced around him, trying to figure out what had caused his mind to drift off like that in the first place and which one of the three he was remembering. Schema had a funny way of just opening up and dragging stuff out from the past, it was easy to think of the whole system like a filing cabinet with little pockets of memory, except sometimes the memories got put in the wrong file and the memories get mixed up in your head and…

He grinned, a warm fondness filling his chest. He’d never taken psychology, but he knew a girl who had, once. Glancing around for purple lights or signs of a sushi bar, he was beginning to think that maybe he was just too tired to think straight when his ear caught the familiar whine of someone tuning up on a violin and he wondered how he’d ever been so dense as to miss it. To be perfectly honest he didn’t like strings all that much – guitars were fine, but violin had never excited him. It sounded old and sad, and he’d tried to talk to her about it a few times but she’d always brushed it off.

_Brushed._ The flow of ash-blonde hair through a hairbrush as it sways before it finds its way back to its ever-perfect place on her head or fanned out on her pillow when she slept, framing her face in a way that managed to make even the unfixable dark-circles beneath her violet eyes look peaceful and gentle, the way- OH GOD, THIS IS REALLY STUPID WHY ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT ALL THIS?

He blinked his eyes again in the dim glow from the bar beside him, no longer smiling, and dug his hands into his pockets. Okay, so maybe he wasn’t so over it as he’d made out, but what did you expect? They were his best friends, and years of late-night talks and pillow-forts didn’t just vanish into thin air. Another tendril of sound floated up from the doorway at the bottom of the steps to the bar, sneaking its way inside his ear and whispering details he’d rather just forget in a tone so honey-coated that he almost forgot he was listening to the same shrill instrument he’d tune out from any other day. Ugh, stupid violins and their stupid violinists.

He glanced down to the bar. There was no one on the door, and from inside he could see the unmistakable glow of what could only be hundreds of strings of fairy-lights and the shadows of people milling around in near-dark. It was fine, right? It was fine if he was checking it out because he was doing it for the sake of adventure and definitely not because it reminded him of Rose Lalonde, it had nothing to do with Rose Lalonde whatsoever in fact that violin thing that was just a co-incidence and really it didn’t matter whether or not she’d stopped replying to his messages years ago because GOD FUCKING DAMN IT JOHN IT IS JUST A BAR, JUST AN AVERAGE PLACE THAT LOOKS INTERESTING WE CAN GO TO ANOTHER ONE IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THE ONE WITH THE VIOLIN, JUST GO TO ANOTHER BAR YOU MORON-

No.

John swore under his breath as he descended down the worn steps and ducked through the doorway. No, it would be _this_ bar, this one right here _with_ the violin and he would prove that he could get through a violin solo without pussying out or feeling sad. He was a grown man damn it and he was going to have a brilliant adventure, whether his schemata liked it or not.

Nothing was going to stop him from a night of adventure. Nothing.

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

No one thought anything of just another guy with messy dark hair and square glasses in casual-formal attire milling around the place, but that might have been because they couldn’t see him. His previous assumptions had been correct – there were shitloads of fairylights in here, but none of them were all that bright. They created a glow but it wasn’t really enough to find your way around the place. Perhaps, though, that was the point; people seemed to be milling around all over the place. As his eyes adjusted, he noticed that there were a few tables and chairs scattered around but no one sitting at them. It’s a common perception of someone who is travelling alone that everyone else in the room knows each other, however John was beginning to notice that although that theory applied well to many situations he’d thus far seen, this was not one of them. In fact, if he didn’t know better, he would have said that any one person in that room could have wandered in off the street in the same way that he had, and something about that felt good: a group of strangers connected by the same burning desire for something new. This was definitely the kind of place you met your future lover or some mad wayward woman with brightly coloured hair was likely to sweep you off your feet into the dark for a night of reckless passion. He could have continued, but he stopped the movie fantasy right there in case there were any telepaths in the room. _Gosh,_ that would be embarrassing…

He turned his attention away from the half-lit room full of potentially exciting people (who, thankfully, also seemed to all be in their own colourful variations of casual evening-wear, this really was some good luck he was having…) to the stage for fear of being caught staring and asked to leave. Oh _man_ , that would be awkward. Although the stage was half-shrouded by what seemed to be some kind of dry ice (but he suspected was just the effect of a lot of dust in the light), he could vaguely make out the shape of a woman leaving the stage. Her silhouette was fairly rounded and moved with a bounce, but more importantly there was definitely something violin-shaped in her hand. Had he missed the set? That was annoying. He felt his cheeks redden slightly at how much he’d psyched himself up for this just to actually miss it and was about to turn and just walk right out when the silhouette of the first woman met the dark shape of someone else on the stage. He couldn’t tell from the distance whether it was male or female but this somebody was also holding something instrument shaped. Squinting, though, he realised that it was plugged in to a wire leading somewhere in the corner of the stage. It was way too small to be an electric guitar in his opinion but he could see that the somebody was fairly small too, and he was no expert when it came to strings. He decided to let himself watch, just for a little while. Just to see what that _thing_ actually was.

John made his way to the side of the room, weaving his way through the crowd and glancing at the stage every so often to see if any developments on the mystery situation were arising. He needn’t have bothered, really, because as the lights went up on stage a most curious silence swept the entire venue. He turned to see a room full of people entranced by the figure on stage, and when his eye followed theirs it was easy to see why.

In hindsight, he kicked himself for not realising it was a girl. Yes, she was willowy and fairly tall with no real curves to speak of but everything about her movements was graceful and feminine. The way her hand curled around the bow of her instrument (which was, much to his surprise, a violin. Were electric violins a thing? It appeared so.), fingers neatly tucking themselves into the perfect formation, the way the light bent and shaped the perfect structure of high cheekbones and a pointed nose, and finally, the long dark eyelashes that seemed terribly artificial in comparison to the rest of her. She was so pale she glowed, and he was dressed in a gown of silky grey that caught the light and shimmered like pebbles underwater.

John Egbert was spellbound, and so was everyone else. The room watched in silence as she began, everyone tracing her every movement with their eyes and trying to create their own mental copy. He watched the arch of her back and the subtle curve where her elbow met her forearms as she played, long, white, hair flowing down to her waist and waving with even her most gentle motion. He’d never heard anyone play like that before – he hadn’t even been aware that a violin could sound that good, but then again he’d never heard an electric violin before. He liked it, but he couldn’t tell if it was because of the sound or the person making it. It was difficult to separate the two, as if the noise she was weaving was simultaneously weaving _her_ – a beautiful paradox all at once perfect and impossible. He had to keep reminding himself to breath.

When at last, all too soon, she was finished, he watched her bob her head in a dainty bow and then glide off to the side of the stage but not before by some malfunction of lighting, the lamps on stage suddenly glowed with more power than they had previously, shining brightly into her irises and exposing something that John had somehow failed to even consider whilst she was onstage.

As she glanced around like a deer in the headlights before being led off, too stunned by the lights to see properly, probably, he had to catch his breath.

Her eyes were purple. Lilac, even. He’d only ever met one person with lilac eyes in his life, and though the possibility was slim that these two were one and the same, something about the setting and the mood made his stomach lurch with the kind of desperation that made people do truly crazy things in the heat of the moment. His brain began to argue with itself.

So, say it was Rose. How would that conversation go? She stopped talking to _him,_ not the other way round. Should he just barge right in there and demand answers? Congratulate her? No, that would seem creepy and he would start babbling about not following her and it all being coincidence and she might call security and oh my GOD what if it wasn’t even her? That would be even _more_ creepy, he could just see it now. Either way, making contact with this mysterious broad was going to be an epic trainwreck and probably not worth the embarrassment. The best thing to do was remember the night as perfect, one of life’s unexpected gems, and move onto the next bar. That way the memory couldn’t be tarnished like so many others by him doing something really really dumb.

And so, John Egbert did look over his reasoning and he did see that it was true and just.

 

And John Egbert proceeded for reasons beyond his understanding to run out of the venue swearing like a crazy person to the flower vendor just down the street and return with a bouquet of lilac roses with which to woo the mystery or not-so-mystery lass that he had been so previously fascinated by, because you only live once and he had to know, he just _had_ to know if it was her.

 

\-----------------------\------------------------

 

The stage door wasn’t hard to find when people were kind. The people here really did seem cool, he hoped he didn’t mess up too bad because it was actually the kind of place he could see himself coming to again. When he asked for directions from the people in the bar, most of them clocked the flowers in his hand and gave him warm encouragement and pointed it out to him but unfortunately none of them could give him a name. Although it seemed kind of wrong he guessed he was going to have to go in there without it, but that was a problem he’d have to address when he came to it. At present, there were bigger things to worry about. Literally bigger things. Security bigger things.

Though the door had been unmanned, the backstage area, small as it was, _was_ manned by a huge guy in a fancy suit. Making his way gingerly up, John flashed him a hopeful smile only to be met with a shake of the head.

“Nope.”

“What?”

“I said no, guy.”

“You don’t even know what I was going to try!”

John became aware of how high-pitched his voice was in comparison to this guy’s and did everything in his power not to feel self-conscious for fear of it getting any higher. The guard looked down at John’s hands and back to his face, raising an eyebrow that told him he knew _exactly_ what John was going to try. With a sigh, John grimaced. “Does she get this a lot?”

At this, the guy’s eyes changed. Clearly _not_ a question anyone else had asked before. “Uh, yeah actually. It kind of weirds her out. Likes her space, you know? Too many young hotshots wanting to be all up on her business before they even know her name. Kind of sad, really.”

The guard appeared lost in his own thoughts before clearing his throat and resuming his stern façade. “I expect you don’t know her name, either.”

“No one can tell me!” John protested. “Trust me, I’ve asked. No one knows her name.”

“That’s intentional. She doesn’t like to be recognised. She’s not a celebrity, she’s a girl.”

“I guess she’d get a lot of stalkers…”

The guy laughed. “Yeah, I guess she would.”

His hopes were dashed, but the guard was only doing his job. Trying not to look too disheartened, John offered him the flowers. “Look, I get that you can’t let me in there and she probably gets a lot better than these, but everyone likes getting flowers. Could you pass these on? Please? You don’t even have to say they were from me if it’s easier.”

The guard’s smile faltered, but he begrudgingly reached out his hand to take them. Stifling another sigh, John turned to leave when he felt a large hand on his shoulder.

“Why do you care, kid? Most guys just yell and leave with whatever they brought for her.”

In fairness by now John was a little pissed at the situation but something tired in the guy’s face  made him shrug and try it one last time.

“I had a friend a long time ago that I never got to see all that much and honestly? I kind of regret it. I saw this girl play and it just took me right back, and I just thought that maybe if I could spend five minutes with her and thank her for taking my brain somewhere I thought I’d forgotten then I could get over it. You only live once, y’know? Got to take chances when they come.”

It was slight hyperbole, but mixed with one last flash of a hopeful smile the guy moved to the side and handed John the flowers back. “This conversation never happened.”

John flashed him a grin and ducked under the beaded curtains, giving the guy one last thumbs up before he had a chance to change his mind. His adventure finally seemed to have some kind of structure, albeit hazy, and he was determined to see it through.

The corridor was fairly dark. He was beginning to wonder if there were any lights in this place at all because even in daylight it was probably too far down to get any sun. Carefully, with one foot in front of the other, he paced it and glanced around for any signs of mysterious women or at least a door that might lead to one. This was _definitely_ the sort of plot that could make a good movie now – the curious hero on his fairylit search for nostalgia. He made a mental note to write that one down.

Or he would have done, had he not found himself all too suddenly slammed against a wall by a pair of stupidly dainty black-gloved hands.

 _Uh oh_. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THE PLOT THICKENS  
> Except it doesn't because of the tags hohohohoho.  
> Seriously what am I writing this is incredibly frivolous and silly. I don't know if I'm doing John's mindset okay? I've actually never RP'd or anything as him I'm really sorry if I am doing him wrong.


End file.
